Page 80 of Sinful Seduction
In the silence, I cup his cheek and draw his eyes back down. And when I have his attention, I poke a thumb back at myself.
“I’ll bring Chief Mayet, too.” He turns his face, pressing a quiet kiss to my wrist. “She’d be there to help you. She’s an ally for girls like you, okay?”
“Okay.” She cries. “Alright. You can bring her. I’ll see you soon.”
“Yeah.” He waits for her to end the call, his thumb hovering over the screen, but not touching. Then, when she’s gone, he lowers the device and sighs.
“What the hell did I miss?” I shove off the bed and stalk across to snag his shirt, ignoring the semen that dribbles along my thigh. “Shedid it?”
“I knew she’d call.” He drags himself to his side of the bed and sets his feet on the floor, then he pulls on a pair of shorts and snags his phone from the bedside table. “I think their relationship was turning bad. Maybe he was hurting her. Small things at first. The sneaky, less significant shit most folks ignore until it’s too late.” He stares into the shadows and looks me up and down. “She’s a straight arrow, and he’s got the streets in his blood. Means someone’s gotta bend. Come on.” He moves around the bed, unlocking his phone and dialing one-handed. “Get in the shower. I’m calling Fletch. We have to figure this out before Grant wakes up.”
ARCHER
It’s nearly six in the morning. Hospital visiting hours are closed, but a patient—the victim of a shooting, the witness to a homicide—demanding to see the police is not really a request Nurse Sally gets to deny. So Fletch, Minka, Molly, Tori, and I crowd into one room, and just like I knew she would, Minka draws battle lines, sitting with the girls with her lips firmly shut and her eyes boring into mine.
Silent. For now.
“We’re not recording yet, Molly.” I show her my empty hands and shrug. Fuck knows, IA is already looking at me.What’s another ding on my record? “I should. You’ve called me and confessed to a very serious crime. I should have you in cuffs already, sitting in a cold interview room, not a comfortable hospital bed.”
“Detective…” Minka hits me with a hard glare. “Intimidation?”
“Facts.” I search Molly’s terrified eyes. “This isn’t a game. It’s not something you get to say and expect us to just… ignore. You’re not gonna get agood girl for telling the truth. Just don’t do it again.”
“I know.” She sits up in her bed, pillows propped behind her back, and her blankets pooling in her lap. Already, spent tissues pile up, scrunched and used. “I know what this means. I know what happens after I tell you.”
“And you waive your right to a lawyer?” Fletch paces behind me, a war ofcop versus dadwaging in his heart. “Are you sure? You could stop all this right now and tie things up for days. For weeks, even. You could make itimpossible for us to come anywhere near you for a good long while, and even then, only when your lawyer is present.”
“I’m sure?—”
Tori groans. “They’re giving you an out, Mol.”
“I’m sure,” she presses, wiping her nose and staring down at her tissue. “I need to tell you what happened. I need this to go away, because my dad deserves better.” She parrots my words, already exhausted and tilting her head to the side. “I did what I did.”
“Wealldo what we do, Molly.” Minka keeps her voice low, leaning closer like she herself is the resident lawyer. “But our reasons for doing them matter.Because I was defending myselfis not the same asbecause I felt like it. Andbecause I was scared,is not the same asI liked seeing the light go out in his eyes. Frame your words carefully. They’re important.”
“Your social media shows a cheery, happy relationship, Molly.” I stop at the foot of her bed and wait for her eyes. “You look like you’re in love. He’s a broken kid from a broken world, but he joined you in yours, and everyone who speaks of him says he was working hard to be a better person.”
“He was.” She drops her gaze, hiccupping. “He was trying so hard. He wasn’t a bad person, Detective.”
“But you shot him?” Fletch’s nose twitches in my peripherals. “This is starting to sound less self-defense and morebecause I liked it. You sure this is the track you wanna take?”
“He slipped. Like you said.” She brings red, puffy eyes up to mine. “He went back and did some things he shouldn’t have.”
My fingers itch for a pencil. My palm twitches with a need to hold a book.
It’s not often I listen to a confession and recordnoneof it.
“I tried to talk to him about it,” Molly whimpers. “I swear. He was skipping classes again, going missing for a few hours here and there, and getting defensive when I asked about it. I’m not stupid, and my dad hammered this stuff into my head. Into my brother’s and sister’s heads. He said how living the way he used to was like a drug. It was an addiction few quit, and even those who do, sometimes they think they can dabble again. Just a little bit. Ben thought he was…” She draws a long, heady breath. “He thought he had control of it. So when he first skipped class, and I asked about it, he told me where he’d been.”
“Where?” Fletch cuts in. “Where had he been?”
“With his old friend. Justin Greaves.” She shreds the tissue between shaking fingers. “You can probably find him in the system if you look.Ben said I wasn’t allowed to meet him at first. He said I wasn’t allowed to hang out with those people.”
“He was protecting her,” Tori adds, raspy and tired. “He knew those crowds were bad, and she was too good to go down there.”
Molly nods, fresh tears slipping onto her cheeks. “He was protecting me. But he told me stuff sometimes. Like how Justin was working for this other guy, and this other guy killed some people a while back.”
My pulse jumps in my chest, bouncing against my diaphragm. “The people who were killed… was this crime reported? Solved?”
